PRINCIPLES OF POLITICAL ECONOMY CONSIDERED

With a view to their practical application

First edition: vi, 601 pages, uncut edges with foxing, worn grey paper covered boards, printed paper label on the spine, which is cracked and worn, uncancelled library stamp on the title page, a good copy.

Thomas Robert Malthus 1766-1834 wrote Principles of Political Economy as a rebuttal to David Ricardo's On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation. While the main focus of their work was to explain economic depressions in Europe and the reasons why they occur, Malthus used his scholarship to explore price determination and the value of goods. Malthus addressed many issues in his works. Principles of Political Economy (1820) was the first text to describe a demand schedule as separate from the quantity demanded at a given price. His exposition of demand curves clarified the debate on Say’s law and gluts (to which he objected in the long run on the grounds that markets self-adjust). His work centered on contrasting the long run, as exemplified by population growth, with the short run, reflected by cyclical events such as those affecting agriculture. Writing before the industrial revolution, Malthus did not fully appreciate the impact of technology (i.e., pesticides, refrigeration, mechanized farm equipment, and increased crop yields) on food production.

Malthus died in 1834, before seeing economics characterized as the “dismal science.” That phrase, coined by Thomas Carlyle in 1849 to demean John Stuart Mill, is often erroneously thought to refer to Malthus’s contributions to the economics of population growth. https://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/bios/Malthus.html